Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that Michael Cohen, President Trumps personal attorney, had used a shell company to receive payments from various firms with business before the Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Departments inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohens financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

What I find interesting is how clean Trump actually is. All this scrutiny and illegal wiretaps etc. And they have nothing on him. He must be the most clean "politician" in generations. We are truly lucky to have such a great leader.

What I find interesting is how clean Trump actually is. All this scrutiny and illegal wiretaps etc. And they have nothing on him. He must be the most clean "politician" in generations. We are truly lucky to have such a great leader.

He wasn't always so clean. Doing business internationally and even in corrupt places like NYC means sooner or later you have to do business with unsavory characters. The Dem pols, the courts, the mob-owned linen and trash services, the casino moguls, etc.

But he did keep pretty clean in his presidential run, considering how extensive his corporate name brand is involved in big real estate projects around the world, often in unsavory countries that are blatantly corrupt by our standards.

I WOULD care if we had a consistent set of laws, and had already imprisoned the Clintons, Obama, Terri Macauliffe, the Bushes, and a whole freak parade of influence peddlers over the years. I care so much I'd like to see all of them broken, stripped of their wealth and imprisoned.

So yes, I care.

But the care has been burnt out of me by reality. All of those criminals walk Scot-free, and hypocrites like you don't care. You just want to get my guy, Trump. So actually, no, I DON'T care anymore. The government is corrupt and unsalvageable. Influence peddling is the name of the game. The Clintons literally killed people. When I say I would like Trump to act like the Clintons I mean that - I think they are killers- they use their power and influence to literally kill off their opponents, which is why nobody dares oppose them. I really believe that. And I would like to see Trump behave exactly like the Clintons - SO MANY car accidents, suicides, Vince Fosters. It's just that now MY GUY would be murdering his political opponents, like the Clintons do.

BECAUSE we turned a blind eye to the Clintons when they did it, I am now eager to see MY GUY start killing off the hateworthy scum who seek to destroy him.

This is what happens when one side plays violent and vicious for so long. Folks decide that the game can't be won because the rules are broken, so they go violent. You've heard my comments on the Civil War before - because slavery was so evil, and the country was unable to fix it legally, I'm GLAD that we had a civil war that killed a million people to end it. It strikes me as JUSTICE. Same with the firebombing of Dresden and the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once one side gets SO evil that they destroy lives and trample on them, they arouse my hatred and I want to see them dead.

Trump should fire Mueller and Rosenstein and Sessions now, and appoint a special prosecutor to investigate them, Obama and the Clintons. If they can be brought to justice under our system, that would be great.

Truth is, our system is so rotten with corruption I don't really believe that justice is possible under it. I don't really think I care anymore. I didn't used to hate the opposition, but I have come to see them as a mortal enemy.

So when I see you in their ranks, firing bullets at my guy, willfully oblivious to the utter hypocrisy of it all.

Well, that's why civil wars happen. No, I don't care if my guy breaks the law and murders people. I DID care, but the CLintons did it, and the Bushes did it. And OBama does it. Now my guy is in charge, and I hope HE does it, to YOUR guys this time. Because that's the way the game is played, until the civil war cleanses the palate.

Not you too? Now you are a true believer in the "clinton body count"???

- Wait, so the Clintons killed people, multiple people, and "everyone" knows it but "everyone" is terrified so they keep their hands in their pockets and their mouths shut.....

Listen, I'm serious about this, you should gather up a "posse" of flamers from this chat-room, rent a bus, drive to Arizona and team-up with Arpiaio and bring those wrong-doers to justice. I'm sure stone would be up for a "road-trip"!

Yes, I do think that the people around the Clintons have killed people.

I know that Bill Clinton is a rapist and a serial sexual harasser, and got away with it. I know that Bill and Hillary engaged in an international bribery scheme that brought them hundreds of millions of dollars, and got away with it. I know that the FBI bent over backwards to exonerate Hillary Clinton despite the fact she had a server in her house full of classified information.

I know that Bill Clinton is a rapist and a serial sexual harasser, and got away with it. I know that Bill and Hillary engaged in an international bribery scheme that brought them hundreds of millions of dollars, and got away with it. I know that the FBI bent over backwards to exonerate Hillary Clinton despite the fact she had a server in her house full of classified information.

We could discuss at length the relative plausibility of these things that you know, and we could also draw some parallels with the actions of your president....

But, that doesn't prove that the clintons were directly responsible for killing anyone. I do not believe that "everyone is terrified of them".

Personally I have no use for either clinton, and if they committed crimes, I would be pleased to see them properly punished.

Proves it to me. Just as the aspects of Trump prove to you various things about him.

Politics is a dirty, corrupt business, but in the end we have to have a government. I care what that government DOES much more than I care about the moral deficiencies of the people who pull its levers.

There are key policies that Trump has pushed that are contrary to what any Democrat wants, and that are also contrary to what the traditional Republicans want. Trump is more like Perot than he is like Reagan or either of the Bushes. And I agreed with Perot more than I agreed with Reagan, either Bush or any of the Democrats.

I want Trump to succeed because he advances my agenda. Every Democrat who closed ranks around the corrupt Clintons and power-abusing Kenyan-born Obama, and every Republican who closed ranks around the Bushes, did so for the same reason: they wanted certain POLICIES out of those men and their party, and they were willing to tolerate and overlook that abuses of morality and of law in order to, in the main, get what they wanted.

I'm no different, no more moral, and no less. When those guys morally grandstand, I just laugh - the hypocrisy is palpable.

I don't take the high moral ground regarding Trump. He's an immoral guy in a lot of ways. I simply don't CARE. He is rapidly and massively de- regulating the country, and that is FAR, FAR more important to me than any aspect of his personal character. Deregulation saves the whole economy trillions, over time, and that saves lives. Controlling the border saves lives directly, and saves lives indirectly, by saving jobs and preserving families. Making peace in Korea and establishing better relations with Russia will save money and lives.

Who is going to do those things? ANY Democrat? No. Any of the major Republicans? No.

So I want Trump in power. And if he is dishonest, corrupt, a tax evader and criminal? Same old same old. That's how politicians are. If he is getting done the big things that need to get done, then I want him protected and unfettered. This is why our Presidents cannot be prosecuted even for crimes. They have to be impeached and removed first. Running the country in crisis is more important than literally ANY law. If the President shoots some official through the head during a national crisis, he cannot be - and must not be - arrested, because national survival in the immediate term is more important than law enforcement, and more important than obtaining immediate justice for the life of one man.

Impeach him and remove him, or wait until his term in office is over, then prosecute him. But when he's doing what I want him to do, leave him alone to get it done.

Clinton was doing a lot of things I didn't like, some I did. But he was President. I thought that impeaching him for lying over a consensual blowjob was absurd, and so did the bulk of the American people. We were right about that. And we're right about Trump. Leave him be. He has a job to do.

I haven't seen more info about the SARs leaker yet. I did find a paragraph on penalties for leaking SAR documents.

DailyBeast: "SARs contain warnings not to disseminate, Sheil added. If convicted for disclosing a SAR, someone could face a maximum five years behind bars and/or a $250,000 fine."

They're making it sound like more info was included to Avenatti than just SAR info. Some experienced people in the field think it was someone from the southern district of NY (SDNY) US attorney's office. But who does Avenatti have contacts with at SDNY?

I think somebody from the SDNY is leaking, said Robert Barnes, a Las Vegas-based trial attorney whos taken Avenatti to task on Twitter. The degree to which Avenatti had details implicates them badly. Barnes pointed out that Avenatti was reportedly spotted dining with former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in late March. He added that Cohen could potentially sue Avenatti for invasion of privacy by illegal disclosure of banking information.

"...I think somebody from the SDNY is leaking, said Robert Barnes..."

Barnes pointed out that Avenatti was reportedly spotted dining with former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in late March.

He added that Cohen could potentially sue Avenatti for invasion of privacy by illegal disclosure of banking information.

Classic fakenews....

Start with speculation by a "credible" source....implicate the target by name....connect the dots by mentioning that your target "reportedly" had dinner with Avenatti.........and remind the low-information reader that a lawsuit is possible......

Classic

Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney who fought corruption, financial fraud and violent crime in NYC - may be running for Attorney General of New York...

Maybe. As with Manafort, if the charges are entirely unrelated to Trump and his campaign, I don't think he'll pardon them. Manafort, for instance, was already quite guilty of money laundering and apparent tax evasion going back 15 years, long before he worked for Trump for a few months.

Manafort's and Cohen's (rather small) chances for any pardon will diminish sharply if they provide a single piece of evidence or information to use against Trump.

Cohen is actually a really lousy and scurrilous lawyer. Graduated from what is widely considered the worst law school in the country, a history of shady behavior with shady characters. I think there is plenty of non-Trump violations by Cohen that they can nail him for all of those. Perhaps it would have happened even without him being Trump's lawyer but Cohen is not a proper professional lawyer by anyone's standard.

Trump is far more likely to reserve pardons for figures like Kushner or Don Junior.

At least we're all becoming comfortable with the fact that these people are all guilty of crimes.....

What we're reaching is a state where it's only a crime when a Republican does it. Dems are automatically immune to any prosecution whatsoever, no matter how serious their recent financial crimes and national security crimes.

A truly evil man obsessed on power, once he achieved it like Donald has, would do whatever he needed to do, pardon any of his agents that got caught doing his bidding, and generally augment his power thereby.

What we're reaching is a state where it's only a crime when a Republican does it. Dems are automatically immune to any prosecution whatsoever, no matter how serious their recent financial crimes and national security crimes.

I've reached the state where I have come to realize that our system is sclerotic and cannot be fixed internally, so it has to be broken to fix it, like in 1861, or 1775.

The criteria for "worst" is practical. Doesn't mean that the graduates from those schools don't know the law, or are stupid, or are bad lawyers. It means that it's hard to get jobs from there, and that they can be expensive. Certainly they are not selective, but that doesn't mean that the lawyers don't know the law either.

Sure, if one is going to be pragmatic, then the BEST law school to go would be the absolutely highest prestige law school to which one can be admitted, because that admission will almost certainly mean a very high paying job afterwards.

My advice to anybody considering law school would be to strive to be in the position where you're choosing between Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Stanford and Chicago. If you get into all five, decide where you want to live.

California? Stanford. The Midwest? Chicago. New York? Columbia. Washington DC? Mmmm. Any of those 5 will work (as will many others). Depends on what you want to do down there.

If you want to be a federal judge, Yale is your best bet.

If you want to work on Wall Street, Harvard and Columbia are your best bets.

If you want to work in Silicon Valley, Stanford is best.

If you want to work overseas, Columbia is best.

Harvard always has the top name recognition everywhere. It's a great school. Columbia is best connected with the business world. It's a great school. Yale has produced so many politicians and Supremes. It's a great school. Stanford is the California Ivy. It's a great school. And Chicago is Law and Economics par excellence, and its graduates are employable anywhere.

That's the tippy top end. But that's not for everybody, and just because somebody went somewhere else doesn't mean s/he's a lesser lawyer.

There are plenty of great military officers who didn't go to West Point, Annapolis, Air Force, Coast Guard, King's Point, VMI or the Citadel.

The criteria for "worst" is practical. Doesn't mean that the graduates from those schools don't know the law, or are stupid, or are bad lawyers. It means that it's hard to get jobs from there, and that they can be expensive. Certainly they are not selective, but that doesn't mean that the lawyers don't know the law either.

They seem to tilt these ratings against CA law schools. They think there are too many law schools in CA, that quality legal education and bar prep is lacking. And at the same time, the CA bar exam is one of the toughest due to the wild machinations of the legislature and the Ninth Circus.

I saw a story a few days back about a law student, graduate of some AZ school. He had failed the CA bar exam 5 times so he heard that IL was easier and went there, failed again. He's got almost $300K in student debt.

"A significant business partner of Michael D. Cohen, President Trumps personal lawyer, has quietly agreed to cooperate with the government as a potential witness, a development that could be used as leverage to pressure Mr. Cohen to work with the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Under the agreement, the partner, Evgeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, will avoid jail time, and will assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations, according to a person briefed on the matter."

They will be ready to run to a court on some legal pretext to stop him. Don't think they haven't considered the options.

I think that Trump has decided he is going to win the election first. By doing so, in the face of all of the static, he will have a mandate to do what he does next.

The Republican Party, for the most part, has realized that Trump IS the new boss, and their own fate is tied to him. Also, McCain is dying, and HW Bush is dying - the old guard are disappearing. W is a stooge - HE can't lead the charge against Trump. Jeb! tried to, but he lost to the margin of error and really is a Carteresque failure figure. Romney blew himself up going after Trump. That leaves Lindsey Graham, and nobody is going to follow Lindsay Graham - he's a weak-chinned milquetoast.

Trump won, and the Never Trumpers lost. But Trump has an agenda, and to get it through, he needs an obedient Congress.

Trump knows that if he goes after Mueller and Rosenstein and the never- Trumpers NOW, the Democrats will ally with the Bush wing and strategically lose the election to get him impeached.

But if Trump waits, negotiates peace with North Korea and a good deal with China, and the jobs keep flowing and the wealth keeps rising, the Trump GOP will win the election, and the Never Trumpers will say their last political goodbyes at McCain's and HW's funeral. "W" is speaking up, but he's essentially the two-term Republican Jimmy Carter, and everybody but the Bushbots knows it.

Come out of the elections with a win, and Trump moves to end all of the nonsense, and make the question be this: does the Mueller wing surrender quietly, having been beaten politically, like the Republican Party and Kim Jong Un, or does the Mueller wing go Iranian, and then have Trump fire off pardons of everybody they've indicted, and sic a special prosecutor on the FBI, Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, the Clintons, Obama, and use the full prosecutorial power of government-with-a-mandate to actually start breaking lives and putting people in jail?

Right now, the Mueller investigation is a foil, a political albatross around the neck of the Left and the Never Trumpers. Trump is gaining popularity BECAUSE OF the prosecution, just like Clinton did after he was impeached.

They will be ready to run to a court on some legal pretext to stop him.

They will. Problem is, to quote a headline: "Trump has now appointed most ever federal appeals judges in 1st year"

Trump is packing the court. With each passing day, the judiciary becomes more and more Trumpish, and, as mentioned in the last post, the Republicans are abandoning the McCain/Bush wing to the political - and physical - graveyard. Trump won, and the Bushes and McCains and Romneys lost. After Trump wins the fall election, the party will be his, and the Republican judiciary will be mostly his.

So, the dems can run to court, but the court is Republican, and it has become as partisan as the Democrats on the court always have been.

Essentially, the Democrats peed in the pool, and the Republicans have followed suit, and have bigger dicks.

So, the dems can run to court, but the court is Republican, and it has become as partisan as the Democrats on the court always have been.

The courts are not yet so Republican that you can count on that.

The Dems have plenty of judicial activist strongholds like the Ninth Circus and the DC Court of Appeals (which was packed with Dem appointees under 0bama after Reid eliminated the filibustering of non-USSC judges with the obvious intent of packing the DC court).

A strongly Trump executive with the AG role firmly under command, for the next 6 years, cannot be counted on to enforce wild judicial opinions.

Example: just because some circuit judge SAYS that his decision applies to the whole country, doesn't mean that the Executive has to AGREE with that, or obey it pending appeal. The Executive, if strong, could say that the judge has acted ultra vires with regards to the areas outside of his jurisdiction, refuse to follow the decision outside of his district, and act forward in the other districts.

A district judge in the 9th District cannot compel the courts of the 5th District to do anything.

Also, as Obama demonstrated, prosecutorial discretion reposes in the prosecutor. The prosecutors, as Trump will demonstrate, are subject to the executive branch, and the executive branch decides what it will prosecute, and to what it will turn a blind eye.

The Democrats and Never Trump Republicans were at their greatest strength the day Rosenstein apppointed Mueller. That strength is ebbing every day as the public turns against them.

Essentially, up to now, the prosecutors and the judiciary have been able to break the law, but when Trump has the government in hand after the November win, the shoe will be on the other foot: the President will be able to decide what the law is, and the courts will only be able to fight a rearguard action. Remember, Trump can appoint special prosecutors to look into judicial misconduct, and judges presuming to overturn the Constitution on matters of immigration control are breaking the law. They can be prosecuted too.

They have gone after Trump with political prosecution. If he wins the November election, he will have won and will have greater power than any Republican since Lincoln. And while past Presidents have taken the win and heaved a sigh of relief, nothing prevents them from striking back with full prosecutorial power, and prosecuting their tormentors, with the support of the people. NOTHING prevents it, just custom. Everybody threw out custom for Trump. There is no good reason why Trump should not be extremely aggressive, vindictive and zealous in using the full power of his office - as he interprets it (which is beyond traditional interpretation), to go out and utterly destroy, imprison, bankrupt and silence the people who have tried, and failed, to do that to him.

Iran and North Korea are the examples. I believe that Kim will come to terms with Trump, or Trump will kill him before he leaves office.

I don't believe that Iran will come to terms with Trump, and that therefore Iranian forces are going to be slaughtered in the Middle East, and there will be all sorts of attacks by "resistance" forces within Iran.

Trump isn't asking for a settlement, he is politely stating that there will be a surrender or a change of government. He is doing that in North Korea, he will be doing it Iran. And once he has won the midterms in the USA, he will be doing it here too.

With the support of the people, who will have just given him a mandate to do it. Trump wants Sullivan reinterpreted, so that when the newsmedia lies, they can be prosecuted for libel. If he wins the November election, that may well be coming down the pike too...except that the news media will change course and knuckle under to him.

I would prefer that Trump was as bold as you indicate but so far the performance is a little lacking. The longer it continues, the less likely it seems that Trump will summon the fortitude to act with the full authority of his office.